What happened to Palaeontology in 1907?

Looking for a Dinosaur Formally Named and Described in 1907

The early years of the 20th Century saw a huge upsurge in the number of Dinosauria scientifically named and described. Eminent palaeontologists such as Lull, Osborn, Brown, Lambe and the first members of the Sternberg dynasty were publishing papers on a vast number of new dinosaur genera, fossils of which were being unearthed in the United States and Canada.

Expeditions to Africa were being organised and within a few years after the turn of the century, a number of exciting dinosaur discoveries were being made on this continent as well. However, despite the amount of research that was taking place during the years between 1900 and 1910, finding a dinosaur named and described in the year 1907 proved tricky for the Everything Dinosaur team members.

We wanted to find a dinosaur that had been named and described in the same year that a school we had visited was built (hence our interest in 1907). We thought this would have been quite easy, for example, the Hadrosaurid and Ceratopsian families were being rapidly expanded and surely, all it would have taken would have been a few minutes of searching through the database and we would find a dinosaur named and described in that year.

Not as easy as we thought, nothing came out of our first searches. Yes, there were a number of other ancient reptiles named and described in the year in question, but we could not find any references to dinosaurs scientifically described in 1907. We extended our search to include some Pterosaurs and marine reptiles but still no luck. In the end we had to compromise and propose Ankylosaurus magniventris named in 1908.